Enterprise Application Management in Cloud Computing Context

Rapid growth of various types of cloud services and web APIs is creating new opportunities for innovative enterprise application. As a result, organizations are beginning to rely on external cloud providers to deliver a significant part of their IT infrastructure and software services. An important challenge, in particular in situations where a large number of cloud providers are involved relates to maintaining continuity of operation in the face of changes in external services. Most current research on this topic deals with this problem from service provider perspective by focusing on version management and related issues. Alternatively, the management of cloud services is delegated to a cloud service broker. There is a need to consider this problem from the perspective of service consumers and to develop effective methods that protect service consumer applications from changes in external services. In this paper, we draw on existing literature on service management and evolution, and cloud service brokerage and present a service-based framework designed to manage enterprise applications in cloud computing environments.